Dei Gloria Mission, Waco, Texas

"Sergeant Montoya, post!"

Stripped to the waist, sweating in the sun, despite having a fifty pound sack of government surplus rice over one shoulder, the priest stiffened to attention. The pattern of scar tissue on the priest's abdomen lost color as the skin there stretched.

"Dammit!" he muttered, shoulders slumping again. "How does he keep doing that to me after all these years?"

He turned around and glared into the smiling face of his oldest and best friend. "Why do you do do that?" An extended finger began to move up to scratch his nose. that?" An extended finger began to move up to scratch his nose.

"Because I can and because it's funny." Schmidt kept his eyes away from his friend's battle scars.

The priest's middle finger stopped moving. He gave a rueful smile, rubbed it and the index finger of his free hand under his nose and admitted, "I suppose it is at that."

Sack still on his shoulder, Montoya looked around for one in particular of the boys helping him unload the monthly supply run from the 49th Armored Division, Texas National Guard truck-food and truck both courtesy of his friend, Jack Schmidt. Armored Division, Texas National Guard truck-food and truck both courtesy of his friend, Jack Schmidt.

Spotting the boy, the priest shouted, "Miguel, take over here. I am going to have a few words with the general. Elpi, would you bring us a couple of beers from the cellar?"

"Si, Padre," answered the dark skinned, brown-eyed teenager, running to take the sack from Montoya's shoulder. "Come on, Julio. You too, Raul...put your backs into it. These men"-he meant the National Guard truck drivers-"don't have all day."

In the cool, dimly lit rectory Montoya and Schmidt sat down on opposite sides of the roughly crafted but st.u.r.dy wooden table. The priest took two beers from Elpidia, thanking her. Then he opened both and pa.s.sed one over to Schmidt....

"Here, drink this, Jack," ordered the sergeant, handing over his own canteen. "Only the best for you."

The lieutenant refused at first, but at his sergeant's insistence took a sip of the tepid, muddy, iodine-tinged water. As he did Montoya glanced down at the red seepage at Schmidt's waist, gift of a mortar fragment ripping across the officer's stomach. Only the bandages Montoya had applied kept the lieutenant's innards from spilling to the ground. It did not look good.

"Not looking too good is it, Jorge?"

"That's 'Sergeant Montoya' to you." The sergeant smiled, hesitated, then continued, "We're down to fourteen men, plus you and me. Ammo's holding out...but only because so many of the ones who ran didn't want to carry theirs. What is it, four a.s.saults we've beaten off? No...five, I think. They've got to be getting tired of it."

Still on his back, Schmidt nodded weakly before allowing his head to flop to a muddy rest. His practiced eye gauged the setting sun. "It's time, Jorge."

"Time? What time?"

"Time for you to leave me, take what you can save and try to get the h.e.l.l out of here."

Montoya just snorted for an answer. Then, to change the subject-admittedly somewhat ineptly, he turned his rifle over and read aloud the serial number, "120857. Good. Still have my own."

"That's an order, Jorge. Get out and save what you can."

"No."

"d.a.m.n you, you wetback! I said get out of here."

"No, Jack," answered the sergeant, calmly, as ever. With determination, as ever.

"Jack? Are you all right?"

Schmidt collected his wits as quickly as he was able, covering his lapse with a sip and the observation, "Good beer."

"Only the best for you."

"Who was that girl?"

"Just a poor girl who has found her way to Christ."

Under winking stars, Montoya whispered, "It's just you and me and about six of the ARVNs left. They're the best six though: Nguyen, Tri, and their crew."

More unconscious than awake, Schmidt muttered, "Christ," then nodded as if he understood. What was left of a platoon had a.s.sembled a rude stretcher out of a poncho and a couple of saplings. On this they proposed to carry off their wounded officer under cover of night.

Montoya spoke a few sentences in reasonably fluent Vietnamese, courtesy of a short course and a long tour, themselves courtesy of the Army. Taking courage from the round eyed Mexican, Corporal Tri grunted his own determined a.s.sent in broken English, "We no leave notin' for stinkin' baby killin' Cong."

"So..." Schmidt hesitated. "I've got some bad news for you, Jorge. Juanita asked me to tell you. She would have told you herself if you would have a d.a.m.ned phone put in here. I can't use my trucks and busses to transport you and your kids to any more political rallies."

"Political? What political?" the priest demanded. "Murder is murder and there's nothing political about it."

"Come on, Jorge, be serious. There is nothing so political in this entire country as abortion. And with the new rules from Washington, any state that permits any interference is going to get hurt, let alone one that uses an arm of its government...which I am."

"Bah. Tell Juanita I am disappointed in her."

"She's doing the best she can, Jorge. Times are tough and getting tougher."

"Not as tough as being twisted around inside your mother and having your brains sucked out through a tube."

Dallas, Texas Nearly four hundred and fifty people burned candles through the night as Father Montoya led them through prayer and song. Mothers held their babies. Husbands held their wives. All joined in asking for divine intervention to stop what they considered a horrible series of crimes.

Montoya looked with mild disapproval upon a large banner fronting one group of protesters: "We, personally, would object to shooting abortion doctors...but we would never want to interfere with somebody else's choice of values. Catholics for Children."

And so Father Flores is heard from again. Montoya walked over to see his fellow priest. Montoya walked over to see his fellow priest.

"Don't you think that sign is, maybe, a little-oh-inflammatory, Father?"

Flores' fanatic eyes flashed fire. "Not so inflammatory as what awaits the people who work in that clinic."

"That is G.o.d's choice for them, Father, not ours."

A murmur arose among the protesters. Montoya turned about to see a line of armored, shielded and baton wielding riot police forming up the street from the clinic. These were not Dallas police, but the United States Surgeon General's new special troops, specially flown in for their first real test. They were four hundred of Rottemeyer's planned one million new police, raised at the same time and under the same bill that gave her a major expansion of manpower, arms and equipment for the Secret Service's new Presidential Guard, in all but name a personal mechanized brigade.

A loudspeaker blared, "Attention. Attention. In accordance with the Act of Congress for the Prevention and Suppression of 'Emotional Terrorism' you have five minutes to clear away from this clinic. This will be your only warning."

Montoya glanced at his watch, then looked around for Miguel. "Get our people out of here now, Miguel. Hurry."

Miguel just nodded and ran, first to Elpidia where she sat playing with her baby, then to the others. "Father says we have to go now. Hurry."

Before the protesters had a chance to so much as move, long before the mandated five minutes were up, the riot police began their charge. Peaceful dispersal was replaced by panicked, screaming flight.

Undaunted, his flock in danger, Montoya steeled his heart and moved to interpose his own body between them and "police" running amok.

Dei Gloria Mission, Waco, Texas

If anyone among the boys of the Mission held a position of leadership, under the father, it was Miguel Sanchez. Need to rebuild a shed? "Miguel, see to it." "Si, padre." Need to put up a fence? "Miguel, see to it." "Si, Padre. Julio, come on and help me."

Did a field need plowing, a tree need pruning, a boy need "counseling"? "I'll take care of it, Padre."

With the father now lying broken and battered, head bandaged where a policeman's baton had cracked it, much of the day-to-day running of the mission fell to young Miguel, under the guidance of Sister Sofia, the mission's sole nun.

But if anyone, besides the father, held leadership over Miguel, it was not Sister Sofia, but little, thin Elpidia. She had so held since about three days after she and the baby arrived at the Mission.

For her part, Elpidia liked Miguel well enough, as well as she could be expected to like any normal male after the life she had led. But her heart belonged to the priest.

"How old are you girl?"

"Old enough to work," she answered.

Shaking his head slightly, the priest provided his own answer. "Fifteen? Fourteen? Fourteen, I think. This is no life for you, child."

"It is the only one I have, Padre."

"Parents? Family?" he asked.

"None, Padre. Just me and my baby, Pedro, and the man I live with, Marco."

"He sends you out to do this and you still call him a man? We shall see. Get in the car. Where do you live?" asked the priest.

Will overborne, Elpidia entered and gave directions. Following these, the priest drove through narrow back streets and side alleys, past garbage and trash long uncollected. At length the car arrived at the girl's-Shabby? "Shabby" would have to do, though it was much worse than that-apartment.

"Padre, what are you doing?"

"Taking you and your baby to a better life," he answered, without further elaboration. He exited the car, walked around and opened the door for the girl-no one had ever been so polite to her before-and asked, "Which one?" At the girl's hesitantly pointed finger, he ordered, "Lead on. I will follow."

The sound of a squalling baby and the smell of soiled diapers. .h.i.t them even as the girl opened the apartment's cheap door. There was another smell too, one the priest recognized from days long past.

Sprawled on the couch, a man-Marco-scruffy, unkempt, filthy, slack faced, smoked a pipe. He looked up as the door opened. "Hope you made some G.o.dd.a.m.ned money tonight, b.i.t.c.h." The man saw the priest as he stepped around to stand beside the girl. "Get the f.u.c.k out of my house, old man."

The father ignored the dope smoker. "Get the baby, Elpidia. You might want to gather up its things, too. Neither you nor he will be coming back here."

Doped Marco certainly was. He was not, however, so drugged that he didn't recognize the imminent threat to his livelihood. "You ain't goin' nowhere, you little s.l.u.t." He stood to bar the way to the baby's unutterably filthy closet. When Elpidia tried to go around him he slapped her to the floor.

Marco was never quite sure, thereafter, how it was that he found himself suspended above the floor, back to the wall and a grip of iron about his throat. He kicked for a little while, his bare, filthy feet impacting on some stone-seeming wall that he knew had not been in the apartment before. With his vision fading, blood pounding in his ears, he dimly heard the priest repeat, "Get the baby, girl."

"Where's Pedro, Elpi?"

"He's sleeping, Miguel."

"Oh. Too bad. I wanted to play with him. Cute little critter."

He looked at Elpidia and said, "You're a good mom." Then he asked, shyly, "Do you think I might make a good father someday? Before he was hurt Padre Jorge told me he had been talking to his friend, Jack, about maybe finding me a decent job with the Guard once I turn eighteen."

"That would be so good for you, Miguel. How is Father?" A tear escaped the girl's eye.

Miguel shook his head angrily. "The same. He can barely walk. But did you see him fight them? It took fifteen of them to beat him to the ground. Fifteen! What a man!" exclaimed Miguel, who had himself once made the mistake of fighting the father. That was the last mistake he had ever made-or wanted to make-where the priest was concerned.

Austin, Texas

What kind of man is this? My very first instance of "hate at first sight," thought the governor of her state's new "Federal Commissioner."